Judge cites "unrepentant recidivism" as the reason for a maximum sentence.

Lulzsec member Jeremy Hammond was sentenced to ten years in prison and three years of probation today in New York by US District Judge Loretta Presca. Hammond pleaded guilty in May to hacking the servers of the private intelligence firm Strategic Forecasting (Stratfor) in December 2011, during which he lifted millions of e-mails and thousands of credit card numbers and destroyed the firm’s data in the process.

Further Reading

The courtroom was full of Hammond’s supporters, who throughout the trial side-eyed a gaggle of West Point journalism majors who filled several rows of space. When Hammond entered the courtroom wearing two layered t-shirts and jeans, several of his friends waved to him. He smiled and waved back before sitting. The proceedings extended over two hours as Hammond’s counsel and the government presented opposing viewpoints of Hammond’s character.

Sarah Kunstler, one of the defense attorneys, compared Hammond’s actions to the rights movements against American slavery and apartheid. “[Those] actors are not always understood in the moment,” she said. “In some cases, history, rather than vindicating them, judges them harshly.” Both Kunstler and the second defense attorney, Susan Kellman, said Hammond’s actions were in protest against a private intelligence agency, and that he did not do it for personal gain.

Kellman cited what she thought of as a similar example of altruistic hacking: the time Hammond went to an Apple store, broke into its system, and pushed the store’s financial data to all of the computers on display. Kellman called the display “more dramatic than was called for” but noted that Hammond spent the rest of the afternoon helping the store better secure its system.

In 2011, Hammond used an SQL injection to gain access to Stratfor’s database, where he found troves of data including credit card numbers stored in plaintext and five million e-mail messages, which were eventually posted to WikiLeaks in 2012. Hammond charged a total of $700,000 in donations to nonprofit groups using the stolen credit card information.

The prosecuting attorneys responded that the lack of personal gain as a motivating factor doesn’t excuse an action. “[Hammond] was not a whistleblower,” said Preet Bharara. The prosecutors highlighted some of Hammond’s other activity, including breaking into the servers of police retirement associations to take the addresses of retired police officers. “There is nothing to give the court comfort he will not do this again,” said Bharara.

The defense and prosecution had an exchange about whether Hammond had “learned his lesson” when he had been sent to prison in 2006 for two years regarding his hacking of a political website. The prosecutors pointed out that he was on trial again for virtually the same type of activity: breaking the law to prove a point.

When the judge called Hammond to make a statement, he stood and grinned at one of his friends before walking to the podium to speak. “I’m actually sick now,” he said, to excuse his raspy speaking voice. Hammond said he felt he “had an obligation to expose injustice and bring truth to light.”

Hammond said that Sabu, the de facto Anonymous leader turned FBI informant, had suggested many targets for hacking after the two became friends and that Sabu encouraged the hack of Stratfor. “It came as a great surprise when I learned Sabu was talking to the FBI the entire time,” Hammond said. Hammond continued by saying that the injustice of surveillance “cannot be cured by an institutional firm, but [instead] by civil disobedience and direct action.”

Hammond was one of the highest-profile catches for the FBI by way of Sabu. He chatted to Sabu as the Stratfor hack was in progress, and Sabu offered Hammond use of one of his servers to store the information culled from Stratfor’s databases.

The FBI then used Sabu’s IRC chat logs to put together information on Hammond and his various online nicknames, which included sup_g, yohoho, and anarchaos. By February of 2012, the FBI was parked outside Hammond’s home, preparing to monitor his Web traffic and line up his online activities to real-life movements with support from Sabu. On March 5, 2012, Hammond was arrested.

Hammond originally pleaded not guilty to charges of hacking into Stratfor’s servers and stealing credit card and personal information in May 2012, but he changed his plea to guilty one year later. Hammond stated that he changed it because the prosecutor “stacked the charges with inflated damage figures” that would have amounted to a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison if he were tried and found guilty.

Airing grievances

As a last step, the judge asked whether there were any victims in the stand who wanted to speak. Two men stood. “Is that David?” said a dreadlocked man in the audience as one of the men approached the podium.

The judge asked the man’s name. “David Zuker,” he replied.

“And you’re a victim.”

“I’m a victim—of FBI repression. I’ve been under surveillance—“ Zuker tried to continue to speak as a security guard pushed him from the room. “More power to the people!” Zuker called out repeatedly to scattered applause before tripping at the door and finally leaving the courtroom.

The second man, who gave his name as Tocce, began to complain at length about alleged harassment he had received from Hammond’s supporters as a friend of Sabu and podcaster about Anonymous activity.

“No,” the judge said. Giggles erupted in a far corner of the courtroom from several of Hammond’s supporters. Tocce turned aggressively as if to approach them, but the judge urged him to finish his statement.

“I was pizza-bombed several times, Chinese food-bombed,” Tocce stated to the barely repressed laughter of the audience. “I had the same feelings as Aaron Swartz,” Tocce said, invoking the reddit founder who killed himself earlier this year while facing hacking charges.

“Because of Anonymous, because of fucking Anonymous!”

The judge finally moved to read her sentence. She stated that Hammond’s activities did not line up with his activist motivations: he “broke into critical systems, destroyed files,” and sought to dump online information, in addition to defacing Stratfor’s website.

In addition to Stratfor, Hammond also hacked other institutions with “no apparent connections to his political motivations” and caused “reputational harm,” the judge said. Hammond stated repeatedly in IRC logs that his “ultimate goal” was to cause mayhem, the judge said, and what he did shows "a total lack of respect for the law.”

For his crimes, the judge sentenced Hammond to 120 months of prison followed by a three-year period of “supervised release.” During that release period, Hammond would be required to participate in a substance abuse program and have all of his Internet activity and Internet devices monitored, both of which he would be required to pay for.

During the release period, Hammond will also have to submit to checks of any devices that access the Internet that he either owns or touches with advance notice. He will not be allowed to use Tor, nor will he be allowed to encrypt his Web traffic or any data stored on any of his devices, save what may be required for employment.

Casey Johnston
Casey Johnston is the former Culture Editor at Ars Technica, and now does the occasional freelance story. She graduated from Columbia University with a degree in Applied Physics. Twitter@caseyjohnston